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Their bad experiences make me think twice: Customer‐to‐colleague incivility, self‐reflection, and improved service delivery
Abstract
Prior research has shown that customer incivility impacts targeted employees' performance. Yet, whether such experiences also influence bystander employees has been overlooked. In this work, we take a third‐party perspective and suggest that observed customer‐to‐colleague incivility may have a positive impact on bystander employees' service performance. Drawing on social learning theory, we develop a model where we study the consequence of observed customer‐to‐colleague incivility on service performance through self‐reflection. A two‐week experience sampling study with data collected from 99 nurses revealed that, observed daily customer‐to‐colleague incivility was positively related to bystander employees' daily self‐reflection, which in turn was positively associated with their daily service performance. Moreover, we identified performance‐based self‐esteem (i.e., the importance of performance to self‐esteem) as a key boundary condition that explains for whom witnessing customer‐to‐colleague incivility is more likely to engender higher self‐reflection. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
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Despite convincing evidence suggesting that organizations benefit from employees' flow states, when and how work flow experience generates negative effects remain largely understudied. By integrating the spillover-crossover model and perseverative cognition theory, we established a model to explain how flow experience induces employees' positive rumination after work (i.e., problem-solving pondering), which ultimately results in work–family conflict. We proposed that mindfulness acts as a buffer factor in this process but further elucidated that work–family segmentation preference serves as a boundary that may alter or even completely reverse the original effects of mindfulness. Our experience sampling method yielded 1425 data points from 186 employees and their family members across 10 workdays in China, and multilevel analyses supported our propositions. We identified the mediating role of problem-solving pondering in transmitting the effects of flow to work–family conflict. Additionally, we confirmed the three-way interaction effect among mindfulness, segmentation preference, and flow. Specifically, the harmful effect of flow is assuaged when segmentation preference and mindfulness are both high. However, flow experience causes severe work–family conflict when mindfulness is high and segmentation preference is low. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.
Studies on workplace incivility have typically posited that the targets of incivility respond in a “tit-for-tat” manner. Moving beyond this dominant logic, we argue that in some cases, the targets may have a different response to incivility that potentially reduces its spiraling negative consequences. Drawing on attribution theory, we explored the following two aspects of the targets’ responses: psychological motivation and subsequent behavioral response. Based on 555 samples of experience sampling data collected from 61 nurses over 10 workdays at a hospital in China, we found that the nurses’ attribution of incivility to either the uncivil patient or themselves moderated the relationship between the patients’ incivility and the employees’ psychological motivation. When the nurses attributed the reason for a patient’s incivility to the patient, their experience of incivility triggered their revenge motivation. In contrast, when the nurses attributed to themselves the reason for a patient’s incivility, their experience of incivility triggered their forgiveness motivation. Furthermore, we found that the nurses’ revenge motivation positively affected their subsequent incivility toward third parties, whereas their forgiveness motivation positively promoted their subsequent helping behavior toward third parties. This study enriches the application of attribution theory to the spillover effects of incivility toward third parties.
Despite much research into the conditions that counteract the detrimental effect of CI on service employees, cognitive processes explaining such effects and boundary conditions remain under-researched. Our study bridges this gap by investigating the day-level association among customer incivility (CI), rumination, and job performance (JP) and the buffering effect of perceived person-job (P-J) fit in this relationship, drawing on CAT. We conducted daily surveys on 135 service employees over five consecutive workdays using multilevel analysis. As predicted, on days when service employees experienced CI, their rumination increased, which negatively affected their JP the following day. However, perceived P-J fit weakened the relationship between day-specific CI and rumination, such that only service employees who perceived low P-J fit engaged in increased rumination after experiencing CI. Furthermore, the indirect effect of CI on the following JP via rumination was significant only for service employees with a poor P-J fit.
The role of different forms of self-esteem (i.e., global vs. domain-specific) at work and their longitudinal changes and associations have yet to be examined. Our aim is to analyze the pattern of longitudinal changes between global self-esteem (GSE) and organization-based self-esteem (OBSE). We used three-wave longitudinal data (N = 1616) of newcomers at the beginning of their career. Results from multivariate latent growth curve models revealed that OBSE and GSE decreased linearly. Their trajectories were positively correlated (r slopes = 0.52), suggesting positive longitudinal associations between changes in both forms of self-esteem. Finally, OBSE and GSE trajectories differently predicted changes in job satisfaction, commitment, work engagement, and burnout. Findings support the importance of simultaneously considering both forms of self-esteem at work.
The increasing prevalence of information communication technologies (e.g., computers, smartphones, and the internet) has made the experience of email incivility and the engagement in cyberloafing more common in the workplace. In this present study, we examined how experiencing email incivility at work can positively predict employees' cyberloafing. Based on affective events theory, we examined negative emotions as a mediator and trait prevention focus and daily workload as moderators. With daily diary data collected twice per day over 10 workdays from 113 full-time employees, we found that morning passive email incivility positively predicted afternoon cyberloafing via midday negative emotions while morning active email incivility did not. Further, trait prevention focus significantly moderated the relationship between active email incivility and negative emotions while daily workload significantly moderated the relationship between passive email incivility and negative emotions. The findings of the present study contribute to a deeper understanding of how employees' negative experiences affect their deviant behaviors in the virtual world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Over the past century, conscientiousness has become seen as the preeminent trait for predicting performance. This consensus is due in part to these employees’ ability to work with traditional, 20th century technology. Such pairings balance the systematic nature of conscientious employees with the technology’s need for user-input and direction to perform tasks—resulting in a complementary match. However, the 21st century has seen the incorporation of intelligent machines (e.g., artificial intelligence, robots, and algorithms) into employee jobs. Unlike traditional technology, these new machines are equipped with the capability to make decisions autonomously. Thus, their nature overlaps with the orderliness subdimension of conscientious employees—resulting in an non-complementary mismatch. This calls into question whether the consensus about conscientious employees’ effectiveness with 20th century technology applies to 21st century jobs. Integrating complementarity and role theory, we refine this consensus. Across three studies using distinct samples (an experience-sampling study, a field experiment, and an online experiment from working adults in Malaysia, Taiwan, and the United States), each focused on a different type of intelligent machine, we show not only that using intelligent machines has benefits and consequences, but importantly that conscientious (i.e., orderly) employees are less likely to benefit from working with them.
Workplace incivility, characterized by low-intensity, ambiguous, and rude interpersonal interactions, is typically conceptualized with an events-based perspective (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). Research suggests, however, that both experienced and enacted incivility may be more pervasive and occur consistently or repeatedly, and this cumulative strain experience may impact future enacted incivility. Here, we examine negative emotions and compassion fatigue as mechanisms that explain experienced and enacted incivility between nurses in a high-stake hospital setting and their patients. Data were collected once per week for 4 weeks, enabling us to examine how these relationships unfold over time. Results from the four-wave survey indicate that experienced patient incivility is positively related to negative emotions and to compassion fatigue and that perceived patient acuity can exacerbate these detrimental relationships. Lastly, experienced patient incivility is related to increased future enacted incivility towards patients indirectly through increased negative emotions and compassion fatigue. These findings suggest that repeated exposure to incivility leads to both poor well-being outcomes for the target of incivility and to future enacted incivility. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Customer mistreatment events play a major role in employees’ subsequent customer service behaviors. We extend this line of research by developing a self‐verification account of the relationship between customer mistreatment and customer‐directed OCBs (OCB‐Cs) by examining theoretically prescribed novel mechanisms (i.e., self‐verification) and boundary conditions (i.e., self‐esteem, entity customer appreciation) for this relationship. We conducted a programmatic series of studies using daily diary (Study 1), audio vignette (Study 2), and behavioral experiment (Study 3) designs to test the proposed model. The overall pattern of results showed that customer mistreatment led employees to feel less self‐verified, especially among those with higher trait self‐esteem. These employees in turn were more likely to withhold OCB‐Cs, especially among those perceiving lower levels of entity customer appreciation. Overall, these results extend our understanding of the role of the self‐concept in how employees experience and react to customer mistreatment.
Workplace incivility is generally viewed as a deleterious interpersonal stressor. Yet alternative theories suggest that incivility may have instrumental implications for some targets. Applying signaling theory, we study client-provider relationships in a healthcare context to unpack linkages between incivility enacted by organizational outsiders and work creativity responses by employee targets. We argue that providers leverage information from client incivility to provide more creative care over time. In Study 1 (N=186), results suggest that clients may use incivility to signal perceptions of poor treatment quality to providers. In Study 2 (N=416), results from topic modeling of qualitative data show that providers observe client incivility and believe it can contain valuable information about client satisfaction. In Study 3 (N=503), providers reported their experiences of client incivility and creativity (incremental and radical) in client care over five waves of data to capture the incubation time that providers may need to reflect on instances of incivility. Employing trait-state-occasion modeling, our findings show that episodic (i.e., higher than normal) client incivility had positive lagged relationships with incremental and radical provider creativity, suggesting that time is needed for providers to process the information contained in the client incivility signal and creatively modify treatment plans. Theoretical and practical implications for workplace incivility and creativity are discussed.
The focus of this study is on how and why incivility is related to employee outcomes. Drawing on role theory, the study tests a moderated mediation model in which customer incivility is indirectly related to service-oriented citizenship behaviours via work engagement, and this mediated relationship is moderated by servant leadership. Time-lagged, multisource data from a sample of nurses and their direct supervisors in thirty public hospitals in Romania were used to test the proposed model. The results of generalized multilevel structural equation modeling (GSEM) showed that the relationship between customer incivility and service citizenship behaviours was mediated by work engagement. Furthermore, this indirect relationship was weaker when employees work under a servant leader. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
Based on social learning theory and regulatory focus theory, we propose that receiving positive and negative gossip from coworkers increases individuals’ vicarious learning, which subsequently improves their adaptive behaviours in the workplace, namely, increasing task performance and decreasing interpersonal deviance. Furthermore, we propose that gossip receivers’ regulatory foci determine the extent to which receivers engage in vicarious learning and change their behaviours. Results from two studies testing a moderated mediation model (Study 1: N = 214; Study 2: N = 189) showed that negative and positive gossip were indirectly related to increased receivers’ task performance and decreased interpersonal deviance through vicarious learning. The indirect effect of negative gossip was stronger for receivers with a high prevention focus, and the indirect effect of positive gossip was stronger for receivers with a high promotion focus. This research documents the beneficial role of receiving gossip from coworkers and advances our understanding of its consequences in the workplace.
Practitioner points
Managers should recognize gossip as a potentially effective channel for disseminating information, providing a valuable learning tool for the receivers, which they use according to their learning needs, as shaped by their regulatory focus.
Organizations could implement measures to share experiences and bolster employees’ vicarious learning through other means than gossip to mitigate potential negative effects of workplace gossip for the targets.
Managers should support higher transparency and access to information to facilitate learning and improve organizational effectiveness.
The global trend of increasing age diversity in workforces has called for research on understanding and managing age differences to better integrate employees across the lifespan into organizations. Integrating aging and lifespan development research and inclusion work, we conduct a daily diary study to investigate age differences in employees’ responses to inclusion experience on a daily basis. In light of socioemotional selectivity theory, we argue that older workers exhibit stronger affective shifts (i.e., increase or upshift in positive affect and decrease or downshift in negative affect) in response to inclusion experience because they are likely to put higher value on social relationships, such that the daily effects of inclusion experience on changes in positive and negative affect are stronger for older (vs. younger) workers through the mediating mechanism of relationship value. We tested our hypotheses by surveying 128 employees from a manufacturing company for 10 consecutive workdays (N = 1,248). We found that the daily effects of inclusion experience on affective changes were stronger for older workers through the mediation of higher relationship value. Changes in positive and negative affect, in turn, related to employees’ work engagement over the course of a workday. Our study serves as an important initial step that examines age differences in affective responses to daily inclusion and sheds light on the importance of promoting workplace inclusion for older workers in particular.
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Conventional research on gratitude has focused on the benefits of expressing or experiencing gratitude for the individual. However, recent theory and research have highlighted that there may too be benefits associated with receiving others’ gratitude. Grounded in the Work-Home Resources model (W-HR), we develop a conceptual model to understand whether, how, and for whom service providers (i.e., healthcare professionals) benefit from receiving service beneficiaries’ (i.e., patients) gratitude in their daily work. We hypothesize that perceived gratitude from service beneficiaries enhances service providers’ relational energy at work, which spills over to benefit their family lives later in the day. In addition, we hypothesize that the effect of gratitude on relational energy and its subsequent spillover effect to the family, are contingent on employees’ occupational identity. Two experience sampling studies with data collected from healthcare professionals and their spouses for two consecutive weeks (each) provided support for our hypothesized model. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our work.
Many workers are subjected to incidents of rudeness and ignorance at work. Emerging evidence suggests that exposure to such incivility has an immediate impact on people’s daily well-being and commitment. In this article we contribute to this nascent area of enquiry by investigating the role of discrete emotions in explaining how exposure to incivility translates into detrimental daily consequences, and by examining whether the role of emotions varies depending on whether incivilities occur during face-to-face versus online interactions. In a diary study of 69 workers, we find that face-to-face incivility has a pronounced daily impact on workers’ exhaustion and turnover intention, and that this impact is mediated by increased feelings of sadness and anger, but not fear. In contrast, cyber incivility only affects workers’ emotional exhaustion as a result of increases in sadness. Our findings provide insight into the mechanisms of daily effects of workplace incivility and the divergent daily effects of face-to-face versus cyber incivility.
Purpose
Research has found that the effects of directly experiencing mistreatment at work are consistently negative; however, results from studies examining employees' reactions to witnessing mistreatment are less consistent. This study focuses on nurses witnessing patient mistreatment in order to examine how third parties respond when witnessing patients mistreating co-workers. We argue that nurses high on other-orientation are less likely to experience emotion exhaustion in the face of witnessing patient mistreatment, whereas nurses high on self-concern are more likely to experience emotional exhaustion. We further argue that the indirect effect of witnessing patient mistreatment on job performance through emotional exhaustion is moderated by other-orientation and self-concern.
Design/methodology/approach
We used data collected at two time points, with six months apart, from 287 nurses working in a hospital. The study tests the hypotheses by using multiple regression analyses.
Findings
Emotional exhaustion mediated the relationships between witnessing patient mistreatment and two forms of job performance: patient care behaviors and counterproductive work behaviors. Furthermore, other-orientation moderated these indirect relationships such that the indirect relationships were weaker when other-orientation was high (vs. low). Self-concern did not moderate these relationships.
Practical implications
Service and care-oriented businesses may protect their employees from the risk of burnout by promoting prosocial orientation among their patient and customer-facing employees.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating the detrimental effects of witnessing patient mistreatment on nurses' performance. It also extends the current understanding of why and when witnessing patient mistreatment is related to performance by demonstrating the joint effects of witnessing patient mistreatment and an individual difference construct, other-orientation on employees' performance.
Despite previous studies that examined factors that would help service employees cope with customer incivility, the role of employee-initiated job strategies has rarely been explored in the context of customer incivility. Drawing on the job demand-control model, we proposed that a high-control job strategy (such as job crafting) alleviates the deleterious effect of customer incivility on job performance through emotional exhaustion, whereas a low-control job strategy (such as service scripts) aggravates this effect. To test the proposed moderated mediation effects, we collected three-wave data from 272 hotel employees and their 54 team leaders over a 6-month period. As predicted, job crafting and service scripts performed contrasting moderating functions. Specifically, the customer incivility-emotional exhaustion relationship was weaker for employees who engaged in job crafting more often than for those who did not. Job crafting also mitigated the negative indirect effect of customer incivility on job performance through emotional exhaustion. In contrast, the customer incivility-emotional exhaustion relationship was more pronounced among employees who used service scripts more often. Service scripts further exacerbate the negative indirect effect of customer incivility on job performance through emotional exhaustion. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for occupational health research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Studies have shown that positive work reflection during evening leisure time is related to short‐term affective benefits at bedtime and in the next morning. This study examines whether the favourable outcomes of positive work reflection persist into the next workday and tests mediating processes between evening positive work reflection and next‐day work engagement. Based on daily survey data from 152 employees (total of 687 days), we found that positive work reflection predicted next morning perceived work meaningfulness, next morning psychological availability, and next‐day co‐worker support. Perceived work meaningfulness and co‐worker support, but not psychological availability, in turn, predicted afternoon work engagement. Work engagement predicted subsequent positive work reflection. This study demonstrates that positively thinking about work‐related issues during leisure time is associated with positive outcomes during the next workday, which prompt subsequent positive work reflection.
Practitioner points
Employees should be encouraged to reflect positively about their day at work during after‐work hours; instead of striving for full mental disengagement from work, employees could develop habits of positively reflecting about their workday during evening hours.
Being fully engaged during the day at work may support positive work reflection during the evening; accordingly, employees may focus on work experiences characterized by high vigour, dedication, and absorption.
Being aware of one’s work meaningfulness and receiving co‐worker support is helpful for translating positive work reflection into work engagement; accordingly, mental exercises that emphasize meaningfulness and acts that facilitate co‐worker support might be effective tools for increasing work engagement.
Sexual harassment from customers is prevalent and costly to service employees and organizations, yet little is known about when and why customers harass. Based on a theoretical model of power in organizations, we propose that sexual harassment is a function of employees' financial dependence on customers (i.e., tips) and deference to customers with emotional labor ("service with a smile") jointly activating customer power. With a field survey study of tipped employees who vary in financial dependence and emotional display requirements (Study 1), and an online experiment that manipulates financial dependence and emotional displays from the customer's perspective (Study 2), our results confirm that these contextual factors jointly increase customer power and thus sexual harassment. Our research has important practical implications, suggesting that organizations can reduce customer sexual harassment by changing compensation models or emotional labor expectations in service contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Despite convincing evidence about the general negative consequences of commuting for individuals and societies, our understanding of how aversive commutes are linked to employees' effectiveness at work is limited. Drawing on theories of self-regulation and by extension a conservation of resources perspective, we develop a framework that explains how an aversive morning commute-a resource-depleting experience characterized by interruptions of automated travel behaviors-impairs employees' immersion in uninterrupted work (i.e., flow), which in turn reduces employee effectiveness (i.e., work engagement, subjective performance, and OCB-I). We further delineate theoretical arguments for daily self-control demands as a boundary condition that amplifies this relation and propose the satisfaction of employees' basic needs as protective factors. Two diary studies across 10 workdays each (Study 1: 53 employees, 411 day-level data points; Study 2: 91 employees, 719 day-level data points) support most of our hypotheses. Study 1 demonstrates that daily aversive morning commutes negatively affect employees' daily work engagement through lower levels of flow experiences, but only on days with high impulse control demands. In addition, we find initial support that employees' general autonomy and competence needs satisfaction attenuate this interaction. Study 2 rules out alternative mechanisms (negative affect and tension), demonstrates ego depletion as an additional mediator of the relation between aversive morning commutes and work effectiveness, and replicates the hypothesized three-way interaction for daily competence need satisfaction. We critically discuss the findings and reflect on corporate interventions, which may allow people to more easily flow to and at work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
In recent years, the popularity of procedures for collecting intensive longitudinal data, such as the experience-sampling method, has increased greatly. The data collected using such designs allow researchers to study the dynamics of psychological functioning and how these dynamics differ across individuals. To this end, the data are often modeled with multilevel regression models. An important question that arises when researchers design intensive longitudinal studies is how to determine the number of participants needed to test specific hypotheses regarding the parameters of these models with sufficient power. Power calculations for intensive longitudinal studies are challenging because of the hierarchical data structure in which repeated observations are nested within the individuals and because of the serial dependence that is typically present in these data. We therefore present a user-friendly application and step-by-step tutorial for performing simulation-based power analyses for a set of models that are popular in intensive longitudinal research. Because many studies use the same sampling protocol (i.e., a fixed number of at least approximately equidistant observations) within individuals, we assume that this protocol is fixed and focus on the number of participants. All included models explicitly account for the temporal dependencies in the data by assuming serially correlated errors or including autoregressive effects.
Drawing on self‐regulation theories, the current study examined the effect of daily experience of customer mistreatment at work on three types of maladaptive behaviors after work (impulsive buying, overeating behaviors, and mobile phone overuse) through self‐control capacity impairment. Further, we investigated the moderating roles of two recovery activities at work (taking some time for relaxation and learning something new at work) on the relationship between customer mistreatment and employee self‐control capacity impairment. With daily diary data collected from 57 fulltime service employees across 5 working days, our results revealed that daily experience of customer mistreatment at work was positively related to employees’ impulsive buying and mobile phone overuse after work (but not overeating behaviors) via self‐control capacity impairment after controlling for the mediating effect of negative affect. Besides, relaxation, but not learning, buffered the positive relationship between customer mistreatment and self‐control capacity impairment. These findings shed light on further understanding the underlying mechanisms between customer mistreatment and employee maladaptive behaviors after work and strategies at work that might mitigate the negative effects of customer mistreatment.
Witnessing abusive supervision is pervasive in the workplace. Intuitively, observers should respond with empathy. Drawing on appraisal theory of emotion, however, we propose that observers’ emotional and behavioral responses to witnessing abusive supervision depend on the perceived goal competitiveness between observers and victims. Specifically, when perceived goal competitiveness is high or made salient, observed abusive supervision is positively associated with observers’ schadenfreude, which in turn decreases their helping behaviors toward victims. In contrast, when perceived goal competitiveness is low, observed abusive supervision is positively associated with observers’ empathic emotion, which in turn increases their helping behaviors toward victims. Data from one experiment and one multi-wave field study provide support for these hypotheses. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings and directions for future research.
Although leaders' daily work is inherently relational, it is possible that leaders can feel lonely and isolated from followers. Integrating theoretical ideas from regulatory loop models of loneliness with evolutionary perspectives of loneliness, we posit that daily leader loneliness (i.e., feelings of isolation stemming from one's followers) may prompt harmful self-perpetuating as well as beneficial self-correcting cycles of loneliness at work via different rumination processes. We expect that leader loneliness will relate to 2 forms of rumination after work-maladaptive affect-focused rumination and adaptive problem-solving pondering. We expect that each form of rumination will hinder or facilitate next-day work engagement and helping, which will then matter for subsequent leader loneliness. In a 10-day experience sampling investigation of 86 leaders, we found that daily leader loneliness exhibits a self-perpetuating pattern via affect-focused rumination because this type of rumination reduces next-day work engagement and helping. At the same time, daily leader loneliness exhibits a self-correcting pattern via problem-solving pondering, as this type of forward-thinking rumination facilitates work engagement and helping the next day. Furthermore, leader self-efficacy enhances the extent to which problem-solving pondering occurs when leaders feel lonely. In a supplemental experience sampling study with leaders and followers, we further show that daily leader loneliness is negatively related to followers' perceptions of leader effectiveness above and beyond more generalized loneliness. In summary, our work sheds theoretical and empirical light on the complex nature of leader loneliness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Withdrawal from work by frontline employees (FLEs) is generally perceived by managers as counterproductive or anti-service behavior. However, there may be detrimental effects of continuing to provide a service, particularly after an FLE has experienced incivility. The possible beneficial effects of withdrawal on frontline service employees’ well-being have rarely been investigated. In this article, we conducted two studies to examine the moderating role of on- and off-task withdrawal behaviors on the relationship between customer incivility and employees’ emotional exhaustion. In Study 1, we examined parking officers’ reactions to customer incivility. We found support for the role of off-task withdrawal as a resource-replenishing strategy, which mitigated the relationship between customer incivility and emotional exhaustion. In Study 2, we examined a sample of nurses in a large hospital to compare the replenishing potential of both on-task and off-task withdrawal strategies. We found that off-task withdrawal served a replenishing function, while on-task withdrawal aggravated nurses’ feeling of emotional exhaustion as a result of customer incivility. These results highlight different resource implications, including recovery benefits of short-term withdrawal behaviors at work, and provide important theoretical and practical implications for the management of customer incivility and frontline service employees’ well-being and performance.
Venting—an emotion‐focused form of coping involving the discharge of negative feelings to others—is common in organizational settings. Venting may benefit the self via the release of negative emotion, or by acting as a catalyst for changes to problematic work situations. Nonetheless, venting might have unintended consequences via its influence on those who are the recipients of venting from others. In light of this idea, we provide a theoretical explanation for how leaders in particular are affected by venting receipt at work. Drawing from the transactional model of stress, we theorize that venting tends to be appraised as a threat, which triggers negative emotion that, in turn, potentiates deviant action tendencies (i.e., interpersonal mistreatment). Yet, our theory suggests that not all leaders necessarily experience venting in the same way. Specifically, leaders with higher need for cognition are less influenced by surface‐level cues associated with others’ emotional expressions and find challenging interpersonal situations to be less aversive, thereby attenuating the deleterious effects of receipt of venting. In an experience sampling study of 112 managers across 10 consecutive workdays, we find support for our theoretical model. Altogether, our findings provide insight into the costs incurred when leaders lend an ear to those who vent, which can result in negative downstream consequences.
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Drawing on the proactive motivation model and theories of motivation, the current study examined customer‐initiated support as an antecedent of employees’ proactive customer service performance (PCSP) and investigated the mediating role of proactive motivations and the moderating role of serving culture. We conducted two multilevel studies to test the proposed hypotheses. In study 1, we collected diary data from 158 nurses across 10 working days, and results showed that the relationship between nurses’ daily experience of customer‐initiated support and their PCSP was mediated by self‐efficacy, work meaning, and positive affect. In study 2, we collected multilevel multi‐source data from 373 nurses nested within 80 units and found that nurses’ experience of customer‐initiated support was positively related to their supervisor‐rated PCSP via role‐breadth self‐efficacy and work meaning, but not through positive affect. Further, team‐level serving culture strengthened the positive relationship between customer‐initiated support and role‐breadth self‐efficacy. These findings shed light on understanding the effect of customer‐initiated support as an external factor on prompting service employees’ proactive behaviors, potential motivational mediators to explain the underlying mechanisms, and potential boundary conditions inside of service organizations to strengthen the positive effects of customer‐initiated support.
Aims
To examine the relationships between perceived ethical leadership, perceived interactional justice climate and patient‐oriented organizational citizenship behavior.
Design
A cross‐sectional non‐experimental design was employed.
Methods
The convenience sampling was adopted. Data were collected in July and August, 2018. A total of 738 nurses were recruited from eight Chinese hospitals. The survey included instrument scales of ethical leadership, interactional justice climate and patient‐oriented organizational citizenship behavior. SPSS version 22 was used to compute means, standard deviations and intercorrelations. The partial least squares structural equation modeling was chosen to estimate the path coefficients of the relationships.
Results
Relationships among perceived ethical leadership, perceived interactional justice climate and organizational citizenship behaviors were statistically significant. Perceived interactional justice climate mediated the relationship between perceived ethical leadership and nurses’ organizational citizenship behaviors.
Conclusions
Ethical leadership is related to interactional justice climate, which in turn, increases nurses’ organizational citizenship behavior. Nurse leaders are encouraged to exhibit ethical behaviors and to create justice climate. Ethical leadership scale can be used to select, train and evaluate the nurse supervisors and managers.
Impact
• Hospital administrators are encouraged to recruit and promote those with both moral compass and leadership potential to nursing leadership positions.
• Nursing managers should create a justice climate in their hospitals.
• Hospital administrators could use ethical leadership scale to develop ethical leadership training programs.
Because stereotypes and social reality are mutually reinforcing, it is often unclear whether a given stereotype has emerged from pre-existing social reality, or has shaped social reality over time to resemble the stereotype (e.g., via discrimination). To address this chicken-or-egg problem, we advance an integrative model that captures not only endogenous stereotype formation from social reality, but also exogenous stereotype formation without social reality. When arbitrary social categories are introduced, the cultural meanings of category cues (e.g., semantic category names) can be exogenously projected as stereotypes onto those social categories. To illustrate exogenous stereotype formation, we examined a novel form of stereotyping and discrimination in China based on astrological signs, which were introduced into China from the West. Studies 1a, 1b, and 2 revealed that astrological stereotypes are salient in China (but not in the United States). These stereotypes were likely produced exogenously because of how the signs were translated into Chinese. In particular, Virgos are stereotyped as having disagreeable personalities, likely because of Virgo’s Chinese translation as “virgin” (Study 3). This translation-based stereotype led Chinese individuals to discriminate against Virgos in romantic dating (Study 4) and in simulated job recruitment (Studies 5 and 6). Studies 7 and 8 confirmed that astrological stereotypes are inaccurate and astrological discrimination is irrational: Astrological sign predicted neither personality (N = 173,709) nor job performance (N = 32,878). Overall, our research disentangles stereotypes from social reality by providing a real-world demonstration that stereotypes can form without pre-existing social reality, yet still produce discrimination that can then shape social reality.
Abusive supervision negatively affects its direct victims. However, recent studies have begun to explore how abusive supervision affects third parties (peer abusive supervision). We use the emotion-based process model of schadenfreude as a basis to suggest that third parties will experience schadenfreude and increase their work engagement as a response to peer abusive supervision (PAS). Furthermore, we suggest that the context of competitive goal interdependence facilitates the indirect relationship between PAS and third parties’ work engagement on schadenfreude. We use a mixed-method approach to test our hypotheses. Data from an experimental study conducted by facial expression analysis technology (Study 1, a 2 × 2 design, N = 104) and a multi‐wave field study (Study 2, N = 229) generally support our hypotheses. Overall, our study extends PAS literature and meaningfully informs practitioners who aim to promote ethical workplace environments.
Workplace gossip is generally viewed as a deviant behavior that negatively affects the work outcomes of employees. However, we argue that this negative view is incomplete. Drawing on the cultural learning perspective of gossip and social learning theory, we examine how the job performance of employee receivers benefits from supervisor negative gossip through reflective learning. On the basis of multi-source, cross-sectional designs, Studies 1 and 2 consistently find that supervisor negative gossip facilitates employee receiver reflective learning and subsequent job performance when controlling for two sets of theory-relevant variables. Study 3, which has a multi-source, cross-lagged panel design, provides further evidence of the directional relationship from supervisor negative gossip to employee receiver job performance through reflective learning. The findings of the three separate field studies support the positive effect of supervisor negative gossip on employee receivers from a learning perspective. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings in terms of how employee receiver job performance can benefit from workplace negative gossip.
To shed light on the paradoxical phenomenon that third parties of interpersonal mistreatment are motivated to restore justice but often engage in unethical actions, this research differentiates between destructive and constructive punitive reactions while testing the different moderating roles of moral identity and moral thinking orientation. From two studies using different methods and samples from different cultures, we obtained consistent findings that witnessed peer-to-peer incivility triggered moral outrage, which in turn led to both types of punitive reactions. Moral identity strengthened the relationship between witnessed incivility and moral outrage, while rule-based moral thinking orientation weakened the relationship between moral outrage and destructive punitive reaction. Moral identity strengthened the relationship between moral outrage and constructive punitive reaction. The indirect effect of witnessed mistreatment on destructive punitive reaction through moral outrage was strongest among participants with higher moral identity but lower rule-based moral thinking orientation. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.
This paper develops and tests a process model examining the sequential mediating roles of emotional exhaustion and surface acting on the relationships between employee perceptions of unfair treatment from customers and three forms of employee performance: in-role performance, customer-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCBC), and customer-oriented counterproductive work behavior (CWBC). In Study 1, we found support for our model demonstrating that the relationships between customer injustice and supervisor ratings of employees’ in-role performance and OCBC are each sequentially mediated first by emotional exhaustion and then by surface acting. In Study 2, using time-lagged data, we found additional support for our sequential mediation process when predicting CWBC. Moreover, we found that emotional demands–abilities fit moderated the sequential indirect effect of customer injustice on CWBC. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
It is difficult to fathom how an organization could be successful without its employees engaging in self-reflection. Gone would be its personnel's capacity to problem-solve, learn from past experiences, and engage in countless other introspective activities that are vital to success. Indeed, a large body of research highlights the positive value of reflection. Yet, as both common experience and a wealth of findings demonstrate, engaging in this introspective process while focusing on negative experiences often backfires, undermining people's health, well-being, performance, and relationships. Here we synthesize research on the benefits and costs of self-reflection in organizational contexts and discuss the role that psychological distance plays in allowing people to harness the potential of self-reflection while avoiding its common pitfalls.
Frontline employees (FLEs) often face customer incivility—rude or demeaning remarks, verbal aggression, or hostile gestures. Although incivility from customers is rising at an alarming rate, most organizations refuse to act decisively to protect their FLEs and stop customer incivility. This research asserts that an organizational policy of ignoring and accepting incivility from customers is neither a wise business strategy nor has positive outcomes. In contrast, customer incivility should be handled promptly and decisively. Specifically, the authors present FLE Constructive Resistance (FLE CR) as a strategy to confront customer incivility. The authors conduct interviews with FLEs, develop a Constructive Resistance (CR) scale to fit the context of FLE–customer encounters, and test a conceptual model to examine the impact of CR by FLEs. The results suggest that customers who observe incivility perpetrated by fellow customers respond positively to FLE CR, including greater future purchase intention, greater positive word-of-mouth intention, and reduced future misbehavior intention. These effects are mediated by the observer’s perceived fairness of the FLE’s CR. Finally, the indirect effects of FLE’s CR on observer outcomes are more likely to manifest in customers with higher moral identity as well as newer customers.
Despite increasing research regarding the buffering conditions of customer incivility, little attention has been paid regarding how firm-driven tactics can serve as buffers between customer incivility and work outcomes. To fill this gap in the literature, our research assessed the relationship between daily customer incivility, next-morning self-efficacy as it related to next-day service performance, and the cross-level moderating effect of perceived organizational control. Using the experience sampling method, we collected diary data from 135 South Korean service employees over five consecutive working days. The results of our multilevel analyses showed that customer incivility from one day had a significant indirect effect on next-day service performance through next-morning self-efficacy. Employees’ perceptions of behavior-based organizational control mitigated the negative relationship between daily customer incivility and next-morning self-efficacy. However, perceived outcome-based organizational control did not moderate the daily customer incivility-self-efficacy relationship. These findings suggest that managing service employees with behavior-based control is more effective than using outcome-based control when helping them cope with daily customer incivility.
Effects associated with observed incivility are often neglected, especially in hospitality industries. The current research, drawing upon social identity theory, proposes that observed leader incivility and the relative relationship between observers and the supervisor (LMXSC) may jointly influence observers’ social categorization process. When observers hold higher rather than lower levels of LMXSC, they tend to define the victim of leader incivility as an organizational outsider, which would be a mediator in the interactive effect on deviant behavior toward the victim. In addition, observers’ trait self-control would be an important moderator in weakening the relationship between perceived outsider status of the target and deviant behavior. By using an experimental study with a two-factor between-subject design and a two-wave field investigation, results supported all our hypotheses. In addition, a three-way interactive effects were reported. Our findings propose a new perspective to explain how, why, and when hospitality observers react to leader incivility.
While the impact of negative customer treatment on service employees and their organizations is often emphasized in both scholarship and the popular press, relatively little work has examined the effects of customer courtesy. We draw on the social cognitive theory to theorize that customer courtesy can enhance service performance via its positive effect on employee self‐efficacy. Although getting customers to display courtesy may be outside an organization’s direct control, we reason that management can amplify these benefits by establishing a strong organizational support climate. To examine our predictions, we developed a customer courtesy scale, then deployed it among service employees in the United States (Study 1) and hotel employees and their supervisors in East Asia (Study 2). We also collected experimental data (Study 3) to test our causal model. Across our studies, our data support the benefits of customer courtesy on employee self‐efficacy and, by extension, employee service performance. Moreover, our data reveal that when organizational support climate increases, the effect of customer courtesy on self‐efficacy, and thus, service performance increases. Although it may be the case that bad is sometimes stronger than good, our work highlights the importance of positive workplace interactions (e.g., customer courtesy) on valued employee outcomes.
Purpose
Performance pressure is unavoidable in the career of any frontline employee in the service industry, yet the authors have little understanding of the dualistic nature of performance pressure. This study aims to distinguish between challenge performance pressures and hindrance performance pressure and to investigate the effect of challenge/hindrance performance pressure on in-role/extra-role service performance through distinct emotional-labor-strategy mechanisms.
Design/methodology/approach
Study 1 conducted exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and developed a performance pressure scale. To test the predictive validity of this scale, Study 2 used data from 178 frontline employees based on diary and experience sampling spanning 18 consecutive calendar days.
Findings
Findings revealed that surface/deep acting mediated the relationship between hindrance/challenge performance pressure and in-role/extra-role service performance. Calling moderated the relationship between emotional labor and service performance. The relationship between surface acting and in-role service performance was weaker in the higher calling condition, whereas the relationship between deep acting and extra-role service performance was weaker in the higher calling condition.
Practical implications
Service organizations should motivate employees to preserve more challenge performance pressure rather than hindrance performance pressure through establishing a reasonable performance target system. Furthermore, organizations can encourage employees to provide more extra-role services for customers through establishing an emotional support system, so as to enhance customer satisfaction.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is a pioneering effort to develop a dualistic performance pressure scale and explore the impact mechanism and boundary conditions of performance pressure on service performance in the presence of emotional labor.
This article aims to simultaneously examine frontline hospitality employees’ functional and dysfunctional coping mechanisms for customer mistreatment, which are meaningfully manifested in their organizational citizenship behavior toward organizations (OCBO) and toward individual coworkers (OCBI). Utilizing the multisource and multistage survey data collected from 11 hotels in Southern China, this study reveals that customer mistreatment heightens the emotional exhaustion of frontline hospitality employees, which, in turn, drives them to engage in less OCBO and, conversely, more OCBI. Furthermore, trait conscientiousness was found to accentuate both the negative linkage between customer mistreatment and OCBO and the positive linkage between customer mistreatment and OCBI, thereby suggesting that being conscientious can be a mixed blessing for exhausted individuals.
This study conducts a systematic review and examines 156 articles of workplace mistreatment in hospitality and tourism industry, published from Web of Science and Scopus. The findings reveal six main concepts of mistreatment with several research themes from the existing literature, and further explicates their triggers and consequences. It also depicts various theories and models used in the referred articles. The article excavates and discusses several key research gaps in the research on workplace mistreatment in the hospitality and tourism industry for future research directions.
In this study, we propose and examine an integrative framework to investigate factors contributing to the experience of workplace incivility (including victim demography, dispositional individual differences, and environmental factors), the affective, health-related, social exchange-based, and behavioral outcomes associated with experienced incivility, and boundary conditions for their relationships. To this end, we conduct a comprehensive meta-analysis on the antecedents and consequences of experienced workplace incivility based on 253 statistically independent samples from 219 primary studies and examine several moderators such as differences in time-related research design (cross-sectional vs. time-lagged), incivility instigator source, and occupation. Further, by integrating meta-analytic effect sizes from the current study with effect sizes from existing meta-analyses, we also investigate the extent to which the impact of experienced incivility on outcomes differs from that of higher intensity forms of workplace mistreatment inclusive of bullying, abusive supervision, and sexual harassment, thereby enhancing understanding regarding the nomological net of experienced incivility in comparison to more intense forms of workplace mistreatment. We discuss the implications of these findings along with study limitations and future directions for incivility scholarship.
Integrating paradox theory with work-life boundary theory, we examine how employees' unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) increases work-to-life conflict. Based on the morally paradoxical nature of UPB (unethical yet pro-organizational), we propose that UPB triggers emotional ambivalence by simultaneously inducing guilt (negative moral emotion) and pride (positive moral emotion). This emotional ambivalence produces a state of anxiety, which in turn increases employees' work-to-life conflict. Our theoretical perspective (UPB to emotional ambivalence [guilt & pride] to state anxiety to work-to-life conflict) was supported by an experience sampling study of hairstylists (Study 1), a vignette experiment of accountants (Study 2), and an experience sampling study of employee-partner pairs (Study 3). In sum, our research demonstrates that unethical behavior intended to benefit the organization may paradoxically hurt employees themselves.
In the present study, we examine the reciprocal relationship between employees’ perceptions of workplace incivility and their deviant silence. We also explore the moderating role of moral attentiveness on the relationship between workplace incivility and deviant silence. Utilizing three‐waves of longitudinal data from 297 full‐time employees working in different industrial sectors in the United States, we find support for the reciprocal model as the best fit to the data, thus validating relationships over time between our study variables. Taken together, our results suggest that workplace incivility at T1/T2 significantly predicted deviant silence at T2/T3. The results also reveal that deviant silence at T1/T2 significantly predicted workplace incivility at T2/T3. Importantly, we found that reflective but not perceptual moral attentiveness significantly reduced the negative influence of workplace incivility on deviant silence in subsequent time periods.
Customer incivility towards frontline employees (FLEs) is a pervasive dilemma within the hospitality industry that remains a significant concern for managers because of its frequency and the severity of its influence. This study investigated the effect of customer incivility on FLE extra-role behaviour by assessing the mediating impact of employee burnout. The study also examines what mitigates and exacerbates the negative influence of customer incivility by measuring the moderating effects of passive leadership and customer orientation. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data collected (using a time-lagged research technique) from 252 FLEs employed by UAE hospitality firms. Supervisor-measured employee extra-role behaviour was also assessed (n = 126). The findings show that customer incivility directly and indirectly (via burnout) affects FLEs’ extra-role behaviours negatively. This effect is exacerbated when a leader is passive and is mitigated when the employees have a high customer orientation. The implications of the study findings for management practice and future research are discussed.
Drawing from signaling theory, we propose a work passion transfer model where leaders’ passion is transmitted to employees through the former's leadership style, and is contingent on employees’ perceived importance of performance to self‐esteem (IPSE). Data from 201 supervisor‐employee dyads from the healthcare industry show that leaders’ harmonious passion led to employees’ harmonious passion through charismatic leadership, whereas contingent reward leadership accounted for the transfer of obsessive passion; IPSE did not play a moderating role for either form of passion. Results from a supplementary study further reveal that the link between leadership and employee passion operated through employees’ perception of leader passion, and that employees’ IPSE accentuated the relationship between perceived leader obsessive passion and employees’ obsessive passion. This study advances research in work passion, leadership, and signaling theory, and provides important implications for managerial practice.
Due to the common business practice of the “customer is always right,” many companies have a risk of dealing with illegitimate complaints. Although illegitimate complaints are a major issue in the hospitality industry, no study has yet examined the impact of illegitimate customer complaining behavior on customers who can witness the complaining and recovery process of others. To fill this gap, this research examines the effects of service recovery aimed at illegitimate customers on customers who witness the complaints’ behavioral reactions (revisit intention, tipping behavior, intention to complain) and the role of emotional expression. A 2 (Service recovery aimed at other customer; good vs. poor) × 2 (Legitimacy of complaining behavior of other customers: legitimate vs. illegitimate) × 2 (Emotional expression: aggressive vs. calm) scenario-based between-subjects factorial experiment is utilized. This research provides evidence that witnessing illegitimate complaints of other customers and the subsequent service recovery aimed at those complainers impacts the behavioral reactions of customers who witness that situation. This study broadens the service recovery literature by incorporating third-party justice theory with illegitimate customer behavior by specifically examining the unique case where the firm is not responsible for the service recovery. In addition, the findings address the benefit to service firms by understanding the impact of witnessing other customers’ service recovery treatment on observers’ subsequent behavioral intentions.
Commonly reported statistics, such as the t value and p value, contain useful information about the cumulative probability of finding statistical significance based on the properties of the sample being analyzed. Unfortunately, converting t values and p values into this form of information is not intuitive and is often done incorrectly. We show how the bootstrap can provide a way to understand the cumulative probability of finding significance based on the characteristics of a specific sample and the statistical model being used. We also provide a simple way to estimate this probability from t values without having to rely on the bootstrap. Reporting sample-based probabilities can help promote robust and reliable research by conveying appropriate levels of uncertainty into discussions of results. We provide recommendations to authors, editors, reviewers, readers, and educators to help counter origination bias (i.e., how much a single-study finding should be viewed as solid or sacred) and other biases tied to misunderstanding the variability inherent associated with reporting “statistically significant” findings.